The murmurings and ramblings of a lovely lady.

Senioritis

noun. A crippling disease that strikes high school seniors. Symptoms include: laziness, an over-excessive wearing of track pants, old athletic shirts, sweatpants, athletic shorts, and sweatshirts. Also features a lack of studying, repeated absences, and a generally dismissive attitude. The only known cure is a phenomenon known as Graduation.

As Urban Dictionary stated, senioritis attacks high school seniors. I’ve had friends that have suffered from this condition since we were freshmen. However, I never expected to be hit with it. In a way, I haven’t. I keep up with most of my homework, I keep good grades. But sometimes you just get so tired of what’s going on around you. Especially as we enter spring. Soon the birds will be chirping outside classroom windows, windows will be cracked, and the outside is going to look a lot better than the inside. Sometimes your eyes will stray from the hands of your American Sign Language teacher. Maybe you will tune out whatever your English teacher is saying about that one really boring book you’re reading.

You might think, “ah, this one math assignment won’t hurt my grade.” But you must make sure that the one piece of homework doesn’t become a month’s worth of homework. I have developed very (and I mean very) bad habits regarding homework. Luckily for me, my senior year isn’t hard. As a military brat, there’s always the possibility of being moved anywhere at any time. My freshman year, my family was moved to Connecticut. I spent my freshman, sophomore, and junior year there. We have four 80 minute classes each day, on an “A” day, “B” schedule. I loved it. I ended up with 24 credits (4×2= 8; 8×3=24) because of that. When the military moved my family and I back to Washington (where I had gone to school for elementary and junior high), I was way ahead of the game.

At the school I’m attending currently, the graduation requirement is 22 credits. All I technically need to do is finish out my ASL (American Sign Language) class. However, the school I’m attending won’t allow me to go to only one class a day (of course. If I’m not there, how can they make money off of me?). But this semester is filled with all fun classes. My favorite right now is Photography. But I’m also partial to the class I TA for. It’s my favorite teacher (she was my English teacher last semester, and my English teacher again this semester), and my favorite subject (can you tell what it is?). It’s essentially a study hall for me right now, since there isn’t much for a TA to do at the beginning of a semester. Especially since what her class is working on are essays, and I don’t think TA’s are allowed to grade those.

I use my time in that class to work ahead on a really fun project that will end up being my final for her class. Not only does it allow me to work way ahead of my peers, it also gives me a lot more opportunities to ask my teacher questions. It’s really quite valuable time. I could let the senioritis claim that time, and just spend it on my iPod, neglecting all other work. But I remain diligent. Although it’s not purely just wanting to get in extra work time. I figure if I get a bulk of the work done in the beginning, it allows more time for editing in the end, to really refine my project. And once that’s done, I might even have a little time left over to just chill out.

I know plenty of people who use senioritis as a legitimate excuse. That’s something I’ve never been behind. I’ve always been for calling it what it is. Sometimes that’s laziness, sometimes that’s just being forgetful. But it isn’t something that you can’t stop. How well you manage your time is always up to you. You know what you have to do, and all that accountability lies with you. I was taught that from a very young age, and I am very thankful that I was.

Grades have always been important to my family. With my Family By Choice, it’s make or break when it comes to me coming back home (there will definitely be a post on them and that whole situation later on). My grades have to stay good, and I have to graduate on time. I struggled with my grades a lot my sophomore year. I was going through some really emotional times, and I didn’t really have the ability to handle all that, and my schoolwork at the same time. Though that’s no excuse, because I knew what I should have prioritized.

I turned that around my junior year. I had to; it was the deciding factor on whether or not I could still babysit. If my grades started to slip, then my babysitting gigs would be taken away. To be completely honest, it was babysitting that really saved me from sinking into a dark hole that I wouldn’t have been able to climb out of. If I had lost that, I would have lost myself entirely. But back to grades!

My senior year has been my best year so far, academically. It could be because I have heaps of motivation this year. It could be that my classes are significantly easy compared to those past. It could just be that I’ve finally developed good habits when it comes to school work. Whatever it is, I won’t let senioritis poison it. The cure to senioritis isn’t graduation at all. It’s motivation.